General Alani Akinrinade (retd.)
A former Chief of Army Staff and Chief of Defence Staff, General Alani Akinrinade (retd.), tells Rev4mation's World that Nigeria may be headed for crisis if the elections are not well managed
You are
one of the finest soldiers Nigeria has ever produced. You also fought
in the civil war to keep the country as one. Do you have any regrets?
When you have a duty, especially if it
is a professional duty, you should be happy each time you are able to
discharge your responsibilities creditably. Therefore, to that extent,
yes (I feel fulfilled.) We fought a civil war. I will say to the best of
my ability, I discharged my duties. But if you look at the reasons why
we fought the war, I will say it was an unnecessary war. If I knew at
that time what I now know after many years of going around the world,
studying history and reading biographies, I just feel it was an
unnecessary war. But, unfortunately today, we’re faced with fighting
terrorism. That phenomenon is going to dominate the world for the next
50 years, like I said in 2001 in one of my lectures. We are going to be
chasing terrorists for the next 50 years if we are not careful. The
reason is simply because we ignore why people do the things they do. We
dismiss them instead of examining the message carefully and finding
answers to it. I think it is rooted in injustice — injustice that breeds
poverty in such a big way; that is overwhelming that people become
desperate to use any means to vent their frustration and religion is an
instrument they use.
Going back to the civil war, we have not
attained the peace we were looking for; we have not achieved that unity
we sought. We wanted to keep Nigeria united for a purpose. We have not
achieved the purpose from what we see now many years after the war — and
that is the source of my regret. There is too much of a class struggle
in Nigeria. The centre of power in Nigeria is so narrow and they make
all the decisions.
How will you assess the
state of insecurity in the country and do you think the Multinational
Joint Task Force is the solution to the insurgency in the North-East?
The insurgency we are facing in this
country is getting more sophisticated and aggravated by the day. The
insurgents are beginning to have high morale as if they are achieving
something. The state of insecurity in Nigeria is very bad; it is
frightening. When Nigeria on the northern border has such countries like
Cameroon, Niger and Chad, I don’t think the insurgency we have on our
hand now is going to recognise any boundary at all. Boko Haram is
looking for territories they can capture; it doesn’t matter whether it
is in Nigeria or Cameroon. That’s certainly a reason for everyone to be
sitting up and lend a hand to the Nigerian troops. If you remember, the
September 11 plot was hatched not in the United States but in a foreign
land. Therefore, there is a possibility that if neighbouring countries
allow the insurgents to establish an Islamic caliphate, the whole world
has a problem to deal with. Evidently, there is a reason for the
international community to get really worried. Unfortunately, despite
having some combined international forces fighting in Iraq many years
ago, that country still remains an unsafe place for people to live. A
similar thing is being experienced in Afghanistan; America is still
battling with the Taliban. Multinational Joint Task Force is okay but I
am not really sure that is the sole solution to the insurgency. I am not
sure the MNJTF alone will solve the problem but we need to have all the
neighbouring countries in the northern border to wake up and start
doing something. I think it’s a very good idea but there are still
limitations to such endeavours.
Nigeria boasts of probably
the best troops in sub-Saharan Africa but the troops seem incapable of
dislodging Boko Haram insurgents. Where does the problem lie?
Perhaps, it is rooted in the trend of
development in the Army itself when they went into governance and coups
started happening. Even within the coups, there were coups and there
were people shot and murdered trying to attempt a coup. With a situation
like that, the esprit de corps of the military has been eroded. I think we lost that esprit de corps
gradually since the day the military started engaging in coups. That’s
one aspect. Second, our governments didn’t have proper ministers of
defence, who represent the political class, the political system and the
professional soldiers. They are removed in quick successions, thereby
destroying the military institution. There were periods when no
development really took place.
In the case of arms, ammunitions and
equipment to match what is happening in the world, we didn’t pay enough
attention to that. I also think that soldiers are humans; they live with
us and they have the same kind of connections that all of us have
within the society. They need to be encouraged. I heard an officer say
that all over the world soldiers buy uniforms for themselves. That is
not true. There is no country in the world that will send its soldiers
to war and be expecting them to buy uniforms with their own money. If it
gets to that point, then we are beginning to lose the grip on our
soldiers.
Do you see anything wrong in the use of the Civilian Joint Task Force in military operations against Boko Haram?
Even during the civil war, we needed the
help of the civilians because they knew the terrains better than what
the map was telling us. They also knew some of idiosyncrasies of the
population there, helping us to know how to handle them. But we didn’t
organise them into a force. If you arm a man and afterwards he is
hungry, he will use the weapon to find something to eat. Boko Haram also
was supposed to have started that way except that religion was part of
it — where a governor was alleged to have used some people as thugs,
though organised, and he abandoned them. They also abandoned him and
turned on the people, the police and the nation. Though that danger is
there for the civilian JTF to become a menace, it is not unusual to use
civilians to help the military in terms of intelligence gathering. It is
easier to send someone who is not a soldier around the enemy line, who
is part of the population whom they know.
Nobody knew the depth to which they
could go simply because we don’t have a police force within the people.
That’s one problem and that’s why the military now need an organised
civilian JTF. But if the soldiers cannot face the guns of the
insurgents, how do you expect people carrying bows, arrows and some dane
guns to be effective? Beyond using them for gathering information, and
assisting the military in carrying out some logistic duties, they can’t
be any more effective. We are on dangerous grounds, more so when we now
have elections around the corner; they may be available to unscrupulous
politicians.
The court marshalling of
soldiers accused of mutiny in the current fight against Boko Haram has
been described by some people as ill-timed. Some say it should have been
done secretly not to demoralise other soldiers on the war front. What
do you think?
We have to be very careful. We are in a
democracy and there is freedom of information. Democracy thrives on
information being freely available; it will be difficult to defend in
the future if the military went into the barracks and secretly court
marshal people on matters of life and death — in which case they can be
sentenced to death. That can be very dangerous. Maybe in military era,
you can do that. But in this democracy, all of us have the
responsibility to demand for an open book so that we know exactly what
is going on. It’s a lesson for all of us. Be that as it may, there is no
good time or bad time of disciplining soldiers. I think what we should
worry about is the frequency and the magnitude of it. When the country
has a hundred soldiers, including officers, being court -marshalled at
the same time, we should start asking ourselves questions. Are we really
going down slope to the extent that we will not able to retrieve these
things if we just apply the simple law? It’s unlawful to demonstrate in
the army. Yet, I don’t think it is enough to rely on the law to
discipline erring soldiers in this case. We need to ask why. I tell
myself that if these (mutinies by soldiers) happened under my watch, I
will court marshal all the officers. I will disband the units because
soldiers cannot under these circumstances do anything on their own.
Therefore, the senior officers must have done something wrong. We should
find out exactly what it is. The soldiers gave all sorts of reasons —
that they were badly equipped and that they didn’t have food. We suggest
to the armed forces to look deeper into the reasons these things are
happening. Using ordinary complaints about equipment not being good
enough to fight the war does not entail discipline. The military
authorities, particularly the civilian authorities, have a primary
responsibility to critically consider this issue and find out exactly
why the soldiers acted the way they did.
Some people are agitating for the postponement of the general elections. How do you see the call for poll shift or otherwise?
Those using the security situation as a
reason for poll shift owe us answers on when it will be conducive to
conduct the general elections. When is the situation going to be better
than now? Before we can debate this, they must advance what will happen
if the elections are held at the scheduled time. I haven’t seen or heard
anyone oblige us with those arguments. I have a feeling that this
situation that we are in is not going to change for a very long time. If
elections could be held in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, we will have
to think again; if really we want democracy or we want something else. I
know there are cases in court concerning the election. I think the most
annoying one is the case about (Muhammadu) Buhari not having a
certificate.
Why is it annoying?
It is an insult to the armed forces — a
terrible insult to the armed forces. If they are so embedded in the
system and they have lost their souls, then they can go ahead and join
everybody else in castigating a General of Buhari’s calibre. They are
now talking about a school certificate. What is that? By the time he
joined the army, in those days, there were no cutting corners. It is
later when these same civilians took over from the army that admission
into it became less transparent. I can give you an instance. There was
Course Five around 1964: if one did not have a school certificate one
couldn’t apply to join the army. And I know up to 1963 when the last
General Officer Commanding left Nigeria, there were no corners to be
cut. There was no such thing. Everything was on merit. And, that was how
it was till Buhari’s time. Buhari attended the Mons (Officer Cadet
School in Aldershot in England) and the Staff College; I don’t want to
think they have an idea what they teach in those places. And the rest of
us pretend as if we don’t know what they do there. You send a man to
America for one and a half years in a military school. Do they think he
just went there to learn how to fire a rifle? No.
But why is it difficult for Buhari to produce the original copy of the certificate?
He did. As I speak to you, I don’t know
where my original certificate is because we gave the original to the
Military Board. They took it from us when we applied to join the Army.
You give the original copy of credential to the board. They take it and
keep it in your file, that’s what happened. How many years ago? 50
years. And Nigeria with our (poor) record-keeping and filing things into
an archive -if we have an archive at all; an archive inhabited by rats
and cockroaches. I think it’s an insult. I take it as a personal insult.
You feel the general elections should go ahead?
Yes. That is what the constitution says.
Let the election hold and let’s see in how many places people cannot
vote before we start this hue and cry. We’re back to 1993. They took us
back all the way to 1993. We have seen this before. I am unhappy that
(Pastor Tunde) Bakare was ever part of it (call for poll shift) because
he is a great fellow of mine. They see a difficult situation instead of
going head on to confront it, Nigeria wants to take a path that leads to
nowhere to only perdition. We have been on this route before and we
know the result. Why do we think this current situation is going to end
up differently? The danger in this one is that we have been hearing of a
possible disintegration in Nigeria; not from outside the country but
within. It was a subject (disintegration) at the National Conference. I
was there. We are driving ourselves towards that route. The result may
not be very palatable. What is more, we have created so many warlords
all over Nigeria. There are private armies around the whole place.
Will you encourage the call
for the international community like the European Union, African Union,
and the United Kingdom to prevail on the Federal Government not to
postpone the February 14 elections just as the United States recently
did?
For people who are democrats, exactly
what America said is what they are going to say. We did this
(presidential election) four years ago where they swore in President
Jonathan and four years after we are going to have another election.
This is not the time to start swaying about like lilies in the wind.
They can’t do much more than they have done; to warn us and also to send
election observers. I hear a lot of them already have observers in the
country, which should be at a great cost to them. Therefore, what else
do we want from these people? We must think of ourselves as being very
much devalued and we earned it — we deserve it. The international
community has done its bit. It is also disturbing that up till now we
still need policemen to be standing by polling booths before we can even
be sure we can vote. If we are expecting much more from the developed
world, we are wasting our time. A few things have changed since 1993
that can make the situation worse now, if we are stupid enough not to
have an election. We might realise that the world is not so enamoured
with us. Perhaps, they are angry with us because we have made a very bad
specimen of a country in a developing world. We’re not even developing
because we’re still very backward.
Buhari has been portrayed as being an honest man. Do you think being an honest man is enough for someone to rule Nigeria?
It is not enough but it is the first
thing in the order in which I would put the qualities of a Nigerian
leader. Considering where we find ourselves today, honesty is the first
quality a man should have. The people should trust a leader to the point
that his words are taken as a bond. If it is your worry that is honesty
enough, I will say yes it is enough. The next one is wisdom so that the
leader is able to get people who will do the work for him.
Jonathan seems to be the most criticised President the country has ever produced. Do you think he deserves the criticisms?
I will just say he earned the
criticisms. There is no smoke without fire. If fish wants to rot, it
starts from the head. The market, women know that when they go to the
market they open the gill. If it is green inside, the fish is rotten.
Even if he didn’t personally commit all the offences levelled against
him, he’s still responsible. He is the President. He can ensure that
justice is done where there are infractions committed by people under
his watch. He shouldn’t allow impunity to thrive.
Recently, Niger Delta militants threatened to go to war if Jonathan loses his re-election bid. What do you make of that?
I know only one of the militants but I
don’t think he was old enough to really talk about what happened during
the civil war. They must also remember, especially the ethnic militias
in the Niger Delta area, that the war went through their places too.
They got away very lightly then simply because it was the area we wanted
to carve out of the jurisdiction of (Emeka) Ojukwu. First, they were
the minorities and they didn’t sign an agreement that said they wanted
to form part of Biafra. As a result, the rest of us were under
obligation to protect the minorities. The war was also fought in their
territories. If they were old enough they would see the misery even
though they didn’t suffer ten per cent of what the East-Central, the
present South-East went through. They are giving wrong reasons to keep
their son in the Presidency. It’s a filthy reason. It doesn’t show they
understand what democracy is all about. Nigerians are not going to vote
under duress. Politics is a game of numbers. The one we refused to do in
1993, we have not come out of it. We’re going through the same cycle. I
don’t think they lived at that time. I don’t think even the politicians
today were old enough at that time to see exactly the drama that
unfolded. It seems to me: we learn very little from our past. What we
are risking is a complete disintegration of our country. Thereafter, we
will blame America for predicting the doom staring us in the face. In
2010, John Campbell wrote in his book what could lead Nigeria into a
bigger trouble. Is that not what is happening now?
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